I started by learning how the combined business operated: the different business types, sectors and contract models in use, and where terminology overlapped or conflicted.

Throughout discovery, I ran regular research and validation sessions every week with product groups, SMEs and stakeholders to understand how contracts were actually being created, reviewed, negotiated, approved and signed across the business. That work helped surface differences in terminology, duplicated contract types, regional variation and gaps between formal process and day-to-day practice.

From there, I identified and de-duplicated the main contract types, then mapped high-level flows for each major scenario. These were reviewed and refined collaboratively before I developed more detailed user flows showing the steps, decisions, edge cases and ownership through review, negotiation, approval, signing and mitigation.

In parallel, I mapped PDA — the governance flow used by PJM for early delivery-risk approval — to understand how pre-engagement risk and principal delivery approval connected to the future contract journey. I then helped shape a to-be version and designed Hive-aligned screens for further validation.

Once the journeys had been agreed, I translated them into screen flows, prototypes and reusable UI patterns for contract creation, document upload, linking contracts, guardrails, mitigations, approval journeys and working-at-risk scenarios. These were then validated repeatedly through further stakeholder reviews and tested with real day-to-day users, not just senior stakeholder groups, to make sure the workflows were usable in practice.